Crafts and Projects

Every year a mom at our school makes these fabulous Halloween cookies and I've always wanted to try them myself. They're such a simple, clever idea and I love that they're not overly sweet with lots frosting like most theme cookies are. Feel free to improvise on the recipe. Some people add a little green food coloring or paint the fingernails. You can also add red gel to the "severed" ends or put some strawberry jam under the fingernails. Get creative.

It has always really bummed me out that there was no great craft store in New York City. When I was a kid I used to go to the Woolworth's on Broadway for all kinds of crafts supplies. I loved that place, but it's been gone for ages and, while you can find some craft supplies at the art supply stores, it's hit or miss. So, I am thrilled that, finally, there is a great craft store in New York City with the opening of Michaels on the Upper West Side. Yes, it's a huge chain, and, yes, it smells unbearably like potpourri, but I'll take it!

Making your own Halloween costume is the whole fun of Halloween as far as I'm concerned. But if you think you need to get all Martha in order to make Halloween costumes for the kids, think again. We found these great Halloween costume ideas that involve no sewing. Find out how to transform your child into an adorable gnome, a Wild Thing Max, or how to make fake blood, boils warts, and wounds mostly out of things you already have in the house.

Yes, your child will most likely come home from school with a Mother's Day gift. Perhaps a ziti collage or a bouquet of paper flowers suspended on pipe cleaners. And you will ooh and ah. And appropriately so. But why leave all the fun to school when you could celebrate Mother's Day as a family, making Mother's Day crafts together (you for your own mom, them for theirs) or Moms could even send dads off with kids to make Mother's Day gifts for a few hours and that would almost be gift enough.

Many kid venues offer Mother's Day gift-making workshops where kids can glue tissue paper flowers together, but we've gathered some unique events where kids of all ages can step the Mother's Day gift-making up a notch, even if Dad has to pitch in a bit.

One of my kids' favorite things to do is make homemade pasta. It's so easy and fun and kids love eating noodles. We picked up a pasta maker somewhere, the kind that you crank the dough through, but the March issue of Cookie Magazine has three easy pasta recipes that you can make with nothing more than your hands, a knife and a colander. I actually think that hand-made noodles have a lighter texture that I love even more.

Making pasta might sound like a pain, but it's really easy and since you can get your kids involved it kills two birds with one stone. Check out these healthy, quick and easy recipes for making noodles that your kids will love making as much as they will eating the results:

This is one of my first and favorite posts and I love to trot it out every year. Just smile and nod, folks. Smile and nod.

The other day we wrote about sharing Valentines Day with your children with a Valentines Day living room picnic dinner. In this post we're sharing an idea that lets you turn your children into the sweetest Valentine I can imagine receiving. It's a super easy project you can do in minutes using adorable vintage Valentine images and your even more adorable little sweetheart. Check it out.

An editor from another kids parenting publication (I'm not going to out him/her) emailed me that s/he had no idea what they were going to do with their kids for a three day weekend of subzero weather. If she is stumped, then the rest of us are totally SCREWED! But seriously, here are some of my favorite websites for inspiration for indoor activities and things to do on a rainy, or freezing cold, day. These are mostly smaller blogs, written by moms with really sweet activity ideas. Check out these sites, browse through the archives, click on their blogrolls to find other great related sites. (Hey at least you'll be occupied all weekend.)

Top 5 Craft and Indoor Activity Websites:

In Pennsylvania you can go to the Crayola Factory Tour and see how crayons are made, but in Brooklyn you can tour the UrbanGlass workshop and see how local artists create beautiful objects out of glass. UrbanGlass regularly holds free open house tours that show visitors the process of creating a handblown glass object. This weekend is a Sketch and Sculpt Open House where they will select a submitted drawing and bring that object to life (The date for submissions has passed, sorry).

You can also take glassblowing workshops and classes at UrbanGlass and even bring your own recycling to turn into something new. The great thing about a glassblowing class is you can create a paperweight or a cup to take home in just one workshop.

I recently wrote about how to find charity activities you can do with your kids. I like the fact that there are some organizations that make volunteering fun and feel not that different than any activity you might do with your children, but for a good cause. I just found out about one such event this weekend: A charity knit-off for teens and tweens.

At the zoo today my friend was telling me how her daughter is already having anxiety about Christmas being over. She said they were even thinking of celebrating Chanukah this year just to spread it out a little and avoid the whole ONE BIG DAY thing. It made me think about the genius of advent calendars for spreading out the fun of the Holidays over a longer period of time.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the advent calendar is really a perfect thing. They are beautiful, creative and hold tiny little treats in them that get to be opened one-a-day, working up to Christmas. What could be better than that? Some people put candies or small presents in their advent calendars, but the really great thing about them is you can create your own advent calendar tradition. You can also make an advent calendar out of just about anything. I've seen some really beautiful and cool home-made advent calendars.

Here are my best ideas both for advent calendars you can make and what to put inside them: